


Everything I Never Knew (Encore)

by Deejaymil



Series: His Dark Mind [3]
Category: Criminal Minds, His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Animals as souls, Canonical Character Death, Crossover, Daemons, Drug Use, Family, Fluff and Angst, Kid Fic, M/M, Married Life, Non-Canonical Character Death, Romance, Sexual Content, Slash, Smut, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-07-27 07:09:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7608613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/pseuds/Deejaymil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Aaron Hotchner was thirty-two, and Spencer Reid barely past twenty, they walked into each others lives with hardly a thought for how this would shape them. Over the next ten years, this singular choice by both of them resulted in them being built up, broken, rebuilt again. Their daemons were their constant.</p><p>When Aaron Hotchner was forty-two, and Spencer Reid ten years younger, they finally vowed their lives to each other. Not only to each other, but to Jack and their daemons and, eventually, to Charlie.</p><p>And life went on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Where We Are Now

**Author's Note:**

> This is a direct follow-on from Everything I Never Knew (Reprise). Because of funny timelines, canon events that do occur will happen out of order and spaced apart differently from in the show. So really, anything can (and will) happen. Enjoy!
> 
> For those who are unfamiliar with the His Dark Materials universe, this is basically all you need to know (taken from the wiki)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> **"A dæmon /ˈdiːmən/ is a type of fictional being in the Philip Pullman fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials. Dæmons are the external physical manifestation of a person's 'inner-self' that takes the form of an animal. Dæmons have human intelligence, are capable of human speech—regardless of the form they take—and usually behave as though they are independent of their humans. Pre-pubescent children's dæmons can change form voluntarily, almost instantaneously, to become any creature, real or imaginary. During their adolescence a person's dæmon undergoes "settling", an event in which that person's dæmon permanently and involuntarily assumes the form of the animal which the person most resembles in character. Dæmons and their humans are almost always of different genders."**

****

_“Do you think the universe fights for souls to be together?  
Some things are too strange and strong to be coincidences.” _

―  **Emery Allen**

Aaron Hotchner never really put much stock in the idea of fate. It seemed a flippant, obscure concept, and one that was contradictory to the way he lived his life.

When he pointed this out to Spencer Reid, Reid said nothing but looked to their daemons.

The wolfdog and the hare, laying together. The wolfdog that wasn’t everything she seemed, and the hare that was so much more.

“I’m open to the concept,” Reid replied simply, and thought privately that only fate could result in the perfection of this moment.

After all, he’d never put much stock in the idea of love, and look how that had turned out.

 

* * *

 

When Aaron Hotchner was thirty-two and Spencer Reid barely past twenty, they walked into each other lives with hardly a thought for how this would shape them. Over the next ten years, this singular choice by both of them resulted in them being built up, broken, rebuilt again. Their daemons were their constant.

Aureilo was Reid’s voice until he couldn’t be any longer. The hare vanished one day in a flurry of gold Dust that slipped between Hotch’s fingers, and what emerged from that was a Reid that was broken by the experience but far stronger for the recovery from it.

Halaimon never wanted anything until the day the hare was lost. Solitary, reserved, and coolly aware that she was an aspect of her human he’d rather remained hidden, she never let any part of him show that he didn’t allow. When the hare returned, this changed. They had what they wanted, and she clung to it with a tenacity and dragged him with her.

Whether it was fate or a stubborn bullheadedness from the four of them, their future was sealed.

“What are we doing, Aur?” Reid asked his daemon quietly the morning of his wedding. The hare itched at the ragged scar that marked the ear he’d lost protecting their son— _their_ son, because Jack had been theirs as well as Aaron’s from the day he was two, and he always would be no matter how this ended—and shrugged awkwardly with shoulders not suited to the movement.

“Moving forward,” Aureilo finally answered, and hopped slowly to the door. “Now hurry up. I’m tired of waiting.”

Fate or choice, they could be glad of this.

 

* * *

 

When Aaron Hotchner was forty-two, he vowed this:

“Spencer William Reid,” he said, and paused because Rossi was looking oddly teary eyed and Spencer worryingly green. Then he continued, because he’d be damned if they’d stop now. “Traditionally, this is where I would state that I choose to be yours for the rest of our lives, but I don’t believe that there’s any choice involved. We look to our future and we see only one. In that Halaimon and I are by your side. We sleep in your arms and we’re a family. In this moment, in front of everyone we love and who loves us in return, we vow to be faithful to that future because for us there is absolutely no other option.

Since the day I met you, you’ve constantly surprised me. First by being you, in every way, a force of life and vitality that I hadn’t expected but one I quickly grew to rely on.

Second by being the kind of person who I could, and did, fall irrevocably in love with. I was never very good at knowing what I wanted but I knew from the moment you first smiled at me that I wanted you.

Third, you loved me back. I never expected that but I am endlessly grateful. I believe as we begin the next stage of our lives that you’ll continue to surprise me, and I look forward to you doing so.

We promise to respect you as a partner, as a friend, as an equal and as a father to our son. And we will love you without pause, for everything that you are and that we promise to be. In this moment I become your husband and Halaimon a part of your soul, if you’ll have us.”

The room was painfully silent. Jack sneezed, covering his mouth and looking guilty. Hotch tried not to smile as Prentiss curled her hand soothingly over the boy’s shoulder, her own mouth twitching and eyes locked on Spencer.

He never once regretted this moment.

 

* * *

 

When Spencer Reid was thirty-two, he returned those vows.

But first, he forgot those vows, because there was always a time to start forgetting things apparently, and it was always, _always_ , the worst possible time.

“Ah,” he said, and looked plaintively to Emily.

“Aaron,” Aureilo prompted, flicking his tail with a roll of his eyes that meant that Reid was in trouble later when they weren’t standing by an altar in front of their entire collective social network. “We aren’t very good at being loved.”

Reid shuddered, his mind whirring into gear, and repeated his hare’s words. “We aren’t very good at being loved but you’ve shown us how we could be,” he said. He’d never meant anything more and he needed everyone in the room to know this. “I don’t know if we can be the partners you wish us to be, but I do know we promise to try.

You walked into our lives and opened up endless possibilities and countless roads for us to travel. Somehow, we managed to choose the one that led us here, to this place, surrounded by these people and vowing our souls to be one. In my heart and in everything that I am, I see the future as becoming simple, the possibilities becoming singular and timeless. The wolfdog and the hare and they stand together, for now and forever.

Our life together has had thirty-five hundred days within it so far, and each one of those days holds memories that we will always cherish. In this moment, I promise to cherish the future days and memories that we face together, the good and the bad. I promise to grow old beside you, to come home to you always, and I promise that every day that I open my eyes, I’ll fall in love with you all over again because I still remember how that felt and I always will.

Most of all, until the end, I promise to love you without pause. Aureilo and I, as one singular being, in this moment vow to take you and Halaimon as our partners and our soul, throughout this life and into the next, for longer than we may live.”

“I pronounce you both married,” Rossi said carefully, his mouth uncharacteristically soft, and that was it. It was done.

It was both the start of something, and the continuation of what had begun ten years prior.

 

* * *

 

When Jack Hotchner was almost eight, his family grew by one. It was pretty great. Spencer always had candy hidden on him somewhere, and his dad smiled a lot more when Spencer was around too. Jack could be down with the idea of marriage if it meant his dad smiling a lot more.

Even if the wedding itself was stupid.

But what wasn’t stupid was finally getting a chance to stand up and tell his dads, both of them, how he felt.

“I love my dad,” he began, and looked solely at his dad as he said so. “He’s always been there to help me and I know he loves me no matter what. I didn’t really understand what he meant when he told me that he was marrying Spencer because I thought being married was living with someone and loving them more than anything and maybe kissing sometimes.

I thought that Dad and Spencer do all those things anyway so why do they need to get married again? And then I asked Uncle Dave, and he said that it wasn’t just doing all those things – he said that getting married meant making a family. It meant that everyone would know that Dad and Spencer are in love and that they’re both my parents and no one would be able to say otherwise.

I still think it’s silly. Because we’ve always been a family, always, and I don’t need my dads to get married to prove that to me. But I’m happy that they are, because I want everyone to know and to know how much I love both of them and how proud I am of them.”

Emily wrote most of the speech and Jack thought privately the whole thing was a bit sappy and a lot silly. All true, but that didn’t change how sappy it was.

The last line on his cue card was smudged, so he made it up. “Thanks for letting me be your son,” he says to Spencer. “I hope you’re proud of me too.”

“How could I not be?” Spencer replied, just loud enough that they could hear him, and now a whole bunch of people were crying. Including Spencer.

Jack was right, really. Weddings were stupid.

But he was always glad of this particular one.

 

* * *

 

Finally, finally, barely six months after that day, Hotch had the idea of Charlie.

It was an idea that started off very simply.

It didn’t stay that way.

 

* * *

 

Charlie was an idea that became a possibility that became a reality.

She was whispered fights at night when Jack was asleep, as Spencer and Aureilo argued that their genes couldn’t give him what he wanted.

Blatantly untrue, and Hotch sought to prove this.

She was JJ looking thoughtful and then determined and then delighted. She was a quiet proclamation of everything their friendship meant to JJ, and everything she would sacrifice and gift them.

Charlie, at some point, became JJ quietly offering them something neither of them would never have thought to ask for.

Charlie became an unnamed idea, endless tense hours waiting at a brightly painted clinic festooned with almost inappropriate pictures of smiling newborns, the slightest of swell to JJ’s stomach, a wary smile on Spencer’s face, and a strange fascination for Jack for the possibility of someone to protect.

And eventually, eventually, during a nightmare for Hotch that had almost become the kind of reality he’d never survive, Charlie became their daughter.

His clothes still stunk of sage and Hal was still twitching and frozen with the horror of what Peter Lewis had made him see, but Hotch had never let an unsub beat him before—not even Foyet—so he got up from the hospital bed they’d tried to shove him into and walked from that room with his great wolfdog daemon at his side, and he didn’t let anyone see how close he’d come to being broken. Aureilo was there, just as solidly determined, because Spencer had always used his daemon as an extension of himself, and part of that meant absolute protection over the people he cared about.

He walked in and found JJ curled up asleep in her own hospital bed, and Spencer in the seat next to her, his eyes closed.

Hotch must have made some noise, or maybe his husband just _knew_ , but his eyes opened and he looked up. Fear, worry, and something gentle and devoted were written across his face, and Hotch wasn’t entirely sure they were all emotions aimed at him.

But he couldn’t take the time to work that out because there was a surge of _knowing_ from Hal, a wild thrill, and he couldn’t look away from his daughter. His daughter, or her daemon.

The daemon was a tiny blur of chocolate brown fur against the baby blue of the blanket, small paws threaded through the material as he clung to the infant that was the other half of his being. Spencer looked down, widened his eyes, made a soft noise that was the exact kind of noise you made when you fell completely and irrevocably in love with something. A hare. A tiny Aureilo, filled with endless possibilities.

Their daughter.

And their family grew again.

 

* * *

 

Out of all the things Reid and Aureilo had considering being, parents had never really been one of them.

They took the parental leave offered by the Bureau despite Aaron probably needing it more, because Aaron was coolly resolute that Lewis wouldn’t leave a mark on him. So they ignored the nightmares or Hal flinching whenever they walked past the sage garden Mrs. Junip up the street carefully tended, ignoring the lingering traces of Mr. Scratch.

As it turned out, despite their unsaid fears of ineptness or somehow messing this up, it wasn’t parenting that challenged them. They worked by correspondence, conferencing in on cases at night when Jack and Charlie slept, and during the day they did everything a dad with very little else to focus on did. The mundane things. Homework with Jack who was almost giddy with the novelty of having a parent at home for once, something that Reid knew he’d feel guilty about later when he went back to work again. They did everything the endless succession of developmental research they’d devoured told them to do with Charlie to help with her early cognitive growth.

They found that, despite never really relishing the mundane things, there was something endlessly comforting about them.

No, it wasn’t parenting that was challenging.

It was giving that up again.

 

* * *

 

Three days before Spencer was due to return to the Bureau, Hotch came home to a silent house.

This was unusual.

It was barely seven-thirty. The house should have been thick with either the scent of Spencer’s failed attempt to cook something or the almost guilt-laden scent of whatever he’d either bought pre-cooked or acquired from one of the many team members they had who both _could_ cook and worried endlessly about Spencer’s ability to discern ‘nutritious’ from ‘delicious’.

It should have been loud. Spencer preferred to exist in quiet seclusion, but Jack didn’t know the meaning of the word. There should have been the cheerful rambling of an animated show on the silent TV, or the sound of paws and feet clattering on the hardboard flooring as Jack and his daemon raced each other through the halls. There should have been the sound of Spencer determinedly issuing a monologue to the captive audience of Charlie in her high-chair, trying to get an early start on explaining the magic of physics.

Failing that, as had happened three times now and each had been equally as alarming as the last, there should have been screeching from a furious five-month-old and her equally furious daemon; angry complaints from her brother who thought that the baby was taking up all the attention; and Spencer bolting out from the kitchen looking harried and panicked and covered in the thrown remains of baby food with Aureilo racing in miserable figure-eights around his ankles.

But there was silence.

Hotch took a deep, low breath and, because he was an agent first and foremost, unclipped his holster and climbed the stairs carefully with his hand at his hip. Hal followed, paws soundless and head lowered, ears twitching and nostrils flaring red.

Then she lifted her head and her tail went _tock_ once against the railing of the staircase as she waved it. “Bedroom, Aaron,” she said, and padded happily past him.

He followed her, pushing open the partially closed door with some trepidation. Despite her calm, he was knowledgeable enough about his family and Spencer’s influence to know that _anything_ could be waiting for him. For Spencer, there was no ‘too early’ for kids to learn about the ignition points of common household solvents, and they disagreed regularly on when Jack should be instructed in the finer aspects of chemistry.

The room was dim, lit only by the narrow beam of light from the hallway that grew as the door opened. It illuminated the carpet first, then Hal sitting by the bed with her chin resting on the edge, and then finally, finally, it caught his family.

Spencer on his back, head tilted backwards over the pillow and mouth slack. Fast asleep. One of his arms was thrown to the side, Jack’s head pillowed on it. All dead to the world, still dressed for the day, as though they’d taken a quiet minute to be a family and been soothed to sleep by it.

Charlie was on the other side, surrounded by soft brown forms. The daemons arranged roughly around her as they slept, ensuring she didn’t roll from the bed. Unlike her father and brother, her eyes were open, and she blinked and looked about vacantly as Hotch walked closer to the bed. Tait was awake too, a fuzzy wolf pup with rounded ears and partially closed eyes, stubby wolf tail tapping at the sheets as he scented Hotch’s presence and whined longingly.

When Hotch crouched at the side of the bed, Hal pressing against him, and reached a hand over his sleeping husband and son to tickle at his daughter’s chin, she smiled.

It was a strange, hushed moment, and one Aaron Hotchner never forgot.

Even after all of this time, Spencer Reid still surprised him.


	2. Why We Do This

 

He goes back to work and it goes fine. Just fine.

Absolutely fine.

He’s fine.

“Are you okay?” Morgan asks him, pausing with a glob of noodles balanced precariously on the end of steadily held chopsticks that Reid envies even as he jabs his fork forcefully into his own lunch. Both Naemaria and Aureilo are floating around his feet, eyes locked hopefully on the fork. “You look…”

“Tense?” Kate suggests, flicking a bean down to Traevor as he pretends he’s not eyeing it off.

“Manic,” Morgan corrects.

“Gassy?” Garcia adds, leaning on the railing above and peering down. “Lactose again, Spence?”

“I’m fine!” Reid shouts, his voice cracking on the -ine, and drops his fork. It clatters to the ground, splattering Aureilo with peanut sauce, vanishing with a _whomf_ as Naemaria dives on it like a creature starved. “Shi-fu-damnit!”

Silence.

Silence broken by Rossi strolling out of his office, Eris on his arm. “Was that an almost swear?” he asks mildly. “From Mr. Oh Jeez himself?”

He doesn’t have to deal with this. This is _inappropriate_ for a workplace. Retaining his dignity, Reid grabs his case files and bolts for Archives. At least _there_ Morgan won’t hover. Aureilo follows, grumbling, leaving buttery hare-prints on the carpet. The others call after him, but he ignores them, shoulders straight.

He. Is. Fine.

At least until he reaches Archives, cracks open the files he was working on, and finds the crime-scene photos peeking up at him. He closes the file with a snap, staring at his hare as Aureilo picks at his fur with a quick pink tongue.

“You know,” Aureilo says, between licks, “we’re allowed to be not okay.”

Reid wishes he could believe that.

 

* * *

 

He gets, by his count, no less than six ‘casual’ visits to his office this day, which is a 140% increase in the usual daily amount of ‘casual visits’ that his team gift him with, if he’s including Rossi strolling in to run his latest internet purchase by him in an attempt to procrastinate his paperwork long enough that Reid takes pity on him and does it instead.

The first is Rossi. Nothing new there. He wants to know if the suit he’s looking at it ostentatious. Hotch assures him it is. This seems to please both him and Eris greatly.

The second is Morgan. A little unusual. Hotch peers at him over his desk as the man prattles about their case, lingers silently for a moment that teeters into uncomfortable, and then slinks out muttering about the weather.

“Is he okay?” Hal asks, lifting her head from where she’s quietly laying by his desk, a silent black statue of a wolf. “He seems… apprehensive.”

“He’s fine,” Hotch replies, getting back into his paperwork with a determination that will see him home in time for dinner tonight. “They’re just readjusting to having Reid back, I think. Discrepancies in the unit always take time to adjust to.”

“Is _Reid_ fine?” Hal asks, tail going _tock_ once on the floor at the reminder that he’s back by their sides, along with her hare. “Have we seen him today?”

Hotch skirts a glance out the window. Reid’s head is bowed over his desk as he scribbles at a file. “Just excited to be back, I think,” he says, and that’s that for two blissful hours.

Then lunch comes, and things go strange.

Garcia pops in. “Hey, hi, hello, so, um,” she begins, all in one breath, and before he can question her on this strange interplay, bursts into, “I know he’s fine and you’re fine and we’re all fine and dandy and happy and I probably shouldn’t be saying this but I think he might be a little stressed or maybe it’s the milk, I really can’t tell, he’s so good at _deflecting,_ not that I know better than you because you know, you married him and you’re a profiler so—”

Tupelo jabs her once in the ear and her mouth snaps shut.

“Is there something you’d like to discuss?” Hotch asks, carefully placing his spoon parallel to his bowl of soup and folding his hands in front of him. Complete attention, even as the chicken noodle scent fills the office and makes both him and Hal’s stomachs growl in unison.

Her mouth opens. Hangs open. Snaps shut. “Nossir,” she says abruptly, waving her hands around and walking out without another word, almost hurtling into Morgan again.

“This case is pretty awful,” Morgan says, shoving the file onto Hotch’s desk. “It’s one of our cold cases Reid’s cleaning up while he’s on desk duty. Yeah, rough? We see some stuff, right…”

And he’s gone again. Hotch eyes the case, decides to look at it after his rapidly cooling soup, and lifts the spoon again.

_One-two-three_ goes JJ’s gentle rap on the door, and she slips in with a easy-going smile and a _sorry am I interrupting_ , and spends the next ten minutes quizzing him on _oh, how’s Charlie, how’s Jack, Spence must be missing them, I know how hard it is to tear yourself away…_

“What is going _on_ today?” Hotch groans, pushing the bowl of soup away. It’s tepid, gluggy, and his appetite has been swallowed up by a churning unease. They’re all _skirting_ something. Before Hal can answer, the door opens again, Morgan once more. Strangely, as he and his daemon enter the room, they bring with them a strong scent of peanut sauce.

“Have you looked at that case yet?” he asks, eyebrows drawn together, and Hotch stares at him helplessly. Glances out the window for help. Reid isn’t there. “Just checking, just checking, no worries…”

Rossi is last.

“Reid’s upset,” he says, slamming through the door like he owns the place. Hotch has just flipped open the case, giving up on his own paperwork, flinching as he’s faced with the output of a family annihilator splayed across the crime scene photos. “Yep, and that’d be why. You gonna eat that soup?”

Hotch abandons both the soup and his paperwork, and goes to find his husband, Hal padding at his side.

 

* * *

 

“You know, the first time we came back to work after Jack was born, we doubted we could do this.” Hal’s voice is calm, serene, and entirely expected. The miserable ball of hare huddled by the stacks immediately becomes a less-miserable line of hare hopping towards her, pressing almost longingly against her front legs as she nuzzles at his flank.

Reid lifts his head from where he’s been kneading his fingers into the skin under his eyes, forcing himself to stare at the photos in an attempt to re-acclimatize. But he can’t stop seeing Charlie, seeing Jack, seeing _horror_.

Hotch drags a chair up, scraping across the cement, and slides the case towards himself, flipping slowly through the pages. “It doesn’t get easier,” he says finally. “I still baulk when there are children involved. I drive Jessica mad by texting her constantly. JJ cries every time there’s an infant on our screens.”

Reid pauses. “I didn’t know…”

“Because she doesn’t want anyone to know. She worries that we won’t understand, that we’ll assume she’s too ‘soft’ for this work.”

Choking back shock at that, Reid’s words are almost vehement. “We’d never think that of her—not _ever_. How does she not know that?”

Hal pins Aureilo down with one paw, ignoring his muffled complaint, running her nose over his fur. “And yet, you’re down here,” she says mildly, ears perking forwards with interest. “Instead of up there, talking to the people who know exactly what you’re going through. Why do you taste like satay, Aur?”

Ah.

Hotch is watching him. Waiting. He’ll take this further if he has to, and Reid knows he’ll support him every step of the way. And beyond. Instead, he stands, shrugging. “Because we’re idiots,” he admits, ignoring Aureilo’s muttered _he’s the one who dropped the fork_ and waiting for Hotch to stand to follow him to the exit.

They’d work through this. Just like they’d worked through every trouble before.

Together.

 

* * *

 

Hotch discovers that, although his husband normally exists in a permanent state of manic, this is multiplied exponentially in the weeks leading up to Halloween. He doesn’t remember him ever being quite this… _this_ … before, so he assumes it’s simply a by-product of having a child without the verbal skills to dissuade him from dressing her how he pleases.

“I’m being Batman,” Jack announces over breakfast, and although Spencer winces at the insipid-y of the costume, Aureilo latches gleefully onto the idea of Arelys as the Batdaemon.

“What are you planning to do to our daughter?” Hotch asks Spencer, as the man innocently stirs his coffee. “Need I remind you that we have an obligation to her mental wellbeing.”

Spencer beams. “Don’t worry,” he says, pouring enough sugar into the coffee that Hotch adds ‘more toothpaste and dental appointments for all’ onto his internal shopping list. “It’s a bonding experience.”

“Please remind him we can’t make a _new_ daughter if he damages this one,” Hal says, brow furrowed, and Aureilo spins in a quick, joyful circle.

“Hal, you should dress up too!” he chirps, sparking an argument that lasts the rest of breakfast and drowns out any more conversation about Charlie’s fate.

Hotch decides to be patient and trust his husband.

This year, anyway.

 

* * *

 

“Oh,” JJ says, lifting Henry from his car seat and turning to find Reid grinning behind her with his daughter in his… branches. “You’re a tree.”

“We’re gravity,” Reid says, beaming, and holds up Charlie with his leaf-bedecked-hands. Placid in her apple costume, she kicks and babbles excitedly, stem hat bobbing. “Except without the dropping. I promised Aaron, no dropping.”

“I’m Mia,” Henry says proudly, puffing his chest out to show off the plastic police badge stuck there. A careful muzzle and whiskers are painted across his grinning face, large fluffy ears stuck on his blonde hair. “And Fi is—”

“I’m Daddy,” his daemon whispers, slipping out of the car as a gangly half-grown German Shepherd wearing a policeman’s costume. Shyly, she sidles behind Henry and peers out around him. “Shh, Henry.”

Henry’s hands slap over his mouth. “Oops,” he says, between his fingers. “I’m a daemon. Not s’posed to talk.”

Jack bounds out from the house, bag in hand and costume flapping, dragging his Batman mask over his face and wild with excitement. Arelys flaps after, a juvenile bat of a species that Reid is fully aware has a wingspan of about six feet when fully grown. “That’s dumb,” Jack announces. “Aureilo’s a daemon and he never shuts—”

“Jack,” both Reid and Aaron say at once, earning a guilty shuffle from the boy.

“You sure you guys are going to be okay with this lot?” Aaron asks, crouched down and fastening the wriggling Tait into the enclosed pillowed space under the stroller set aside for infant daemons. The kitten protests his capture with sharp claws, but settles down as soon as Reid adds his apple-daughter to the stroller, allowing them to peer at each other through the light mesh and babble in their own language.

“Oh, we hunt serial killers,” JJ says with a laugh. “How hard can Trick-or-Treating be?”

As it turns out, entirely simple. Almost entirely simple.

Absolutely simple, until Reid loses sight of Jack.

It’s a split second. Charlie throws her bottle to clatter into the feet of a bunch of animal-themed children nearby. Aureilo dives for it, almost gets a foot to the head, and Reid dives after them both. Henry and JJ turn to laugh, and Jack is watching an animatronic display at the house across the street.

When Reid turns, triumphant with the battered bottle in one hand and his awkwardly dangling hare in the other, Jack’s gone.

The panic is instant and crushing. JJ’s looking at him, and he sees it reflect in her eyes before she even registers what he’s panicking about, reacting merely to the gut-dropping way his face falls. She looks around, noting Jack’s disappearance.

“Oh, where’d he run off to?” she says with a frown, peering over the heads of children surrounding them. Reid swallows his panic, chokes on it, feeling his chest tighten as he whirls in a circle and scans for the dark mask—but every second child is a superhero, every forth a Batman, and he can’t see Arelys, can’t see Jack, can’t—

“Jack!” shouts Aureilo, paws skittering as he jumps down, responding to the wordless fear that Reid can’t voice. It’s crowded, busy, there are adults and children mingling everywhere, and it’s the perfect time for someone to—they have so many enemies, so many, and any one of them—

“What?” Jack appears, confused, holding his torn bag in both hands. “My bag broke, Spence. The handle snapped…”

Reid exhales. Stares at him. Blue eyes meet his and widen as they recognise his anxiety. “Please,” Reid breathes slowly, “please stay within sight.” Heart hammering and almost dizzy with relief, Reid has to focus on slowing the thump of blood in his ears.

“I was only there,” Jack protests, pointing to a patch of sidewalk. “I just stopped. Why are you mad?”

“He’s not mad, are you Spence?” JJ soothes, swooping in. “Come on, come on, we’re falling behind.” Shooing Jack and Arelys ahead to where Henry is watching, she turns on Reid, “Spence, he’s fine. Look at him. He was only gone a moment.”

Reid nods slowly. Jack almost trips on Aureilo, the hare sticking close enough to him that he’s having to look down to see where to step. From the stroller, Charlie whines, her bottle still in his hands. “Yeah,” he says, nodding and turning to his daughter, saving her hat from disappearing into her gummy mouth. “Yeah, he’s fine. Sorry.”

JJ doesn’t say anything, but her expression promises that this isn’t over yet.

 

* * *

 

Time has remarkable healing qualities. Charlie and Jack grow, decidedly unkidnapped, unmurdered, un-whateverelse Reid’s overworked brain is imagining them being, and things settle down. They have cases; cases with kids, cases with families, and Reid handles them. He doesn’t cling to the children when they’re home. Aureilo stops looking strained every time they walk through the glass doors of the sixth floor. Hotch relaxes. They’re past the worst, he figures.

Charlie is ten months old when Meg Callahan is taken by human traffickers.

 

* * *

 

Written all over Callahan’s face is the nightmare that’s been haunting him now for the past four months. It’s a nightmare made of snapshots of time.

An empty bedroom. A darkened van. It’s made of the last words exchanged; it’s made of describing the clothes a child was wearing when the parent waved them goodbye. It’s the things left unsaid and the endless possibilities, and Reid can’t help but stare at the whiteboard that’s, at this point in time, terrifyingly empty and wonder if it will be his turn one day.

Then he pushes all that aside. Focuses. Focuses on finding her, this other person’s daughter, because his mind has to be solely on her right now and not whirling around thoughts of an empty crib and a broken heart and a hare searching fruitlessly for something precious lost.

He focuses until Garcia finds the website. He focuses until he’s standing behind her chair, his hand resting on the backrest, watching snapshot after snapshot of other people’s daughters scroll endlessly by; life after life after life snatched away, and his world narrows.

They’re all so young, so broken, so vulnerable, and no one knew to look for them.

They find Meg, in time or maybe just a little too late, but he’s pretty sure they’ve all lost something today.

 

* * *

 

He finds Reid and Aureilo standing in the shadows of the barn, watching as the paramedics check over the hysterical Meg as Callahan hovers protectively at her side. Their daemons are a tangle of limbs around Meg’s feet, neither willing to let go of the other, Traevor’s paws obsessively running over the lithe form of Meg’s muskrat and checking for injuries.

“We found her,” Hotch says redundantly, and Reid nods blankly. “Alive.” Another nod. “Relatively unharmed.” This earns him a side-look, as his husband considers quibbling over the definition of ‘relatively’. “This is an incongruity.”

Reid turns and, after a quick glance around to make sure no one is watching them in their gloomy hide-away, tucks himself tight against Hotch’s chest, leaning his mouth against the line between neck and shoulder and huffing an overwrought sounding breath.

“Foyet,” he mumbles, and Hotch’s neck is hot with his breath and hot with the unexpected touch and hot with a flush of anger at the name. “Doyle. Frank. The Face Card. The Replicator. They all came knocking. They all became _personal_.”

“Spence,” Hotch says, stepping back despite wanting anything _but_ to back away.

Reid just shudders once, and turns away. Someone calls Hotch’s name. “You’re wanted,” he says, voice as taut as a rubber band left to turn brittle in the sun and then carelessly stretched. Hotch nods, turns, walks away slowly, reluctantly. A soft sentence follows him, “I don’t know if I can do this job anymore.”

He hates to admit that he completely understands.

 

* * *

 

They travel home in silence, Hal sprawled in the backseat and Aureilo flat between Reid’s knees, letting Reid trail his fingers over the hare’s silky soft ear. Once, only once, does Aaron let his hand drift from the wheel at a stopped intersection to curl protectively over Reid’s hand and his hare all at once, both of them shivering a little at the gentle brush of Aaron’s fingers on the hare’s fur.

It’s late, when they reach home. The street is silent, broken only by the _thunk_ of their car doors closing and the gentle rattle of the keys as Aaron unlocks the front door. Jack is awake, jubilantly quiet as he tries not to bounce too hard while greeting them, lest his feet on the wooden floors wake up his sister. Reid hugs him, wary of lingering too long in case Aaron thinks he’s overthinking again, and then slinks upstairs.

Charlie is on her back, arms thrown outwards. By her side, Tait is a wolf pup again, just as carelessly sprawled, mouth hanging open and snoring softly with one paw twitching.

“Hello, love,” Reid murmurs, tracing the pads of his fingers over his daughter’s chubby arm, nudging her half-curled hand to settle around them. “Busy day forming new neural pathways and developing those fine motor controls?”

She snuffles in response. Leaning closer, he closes his eyes, his heart doing a strange _tha-thump thump_ in his chest that he’s beginning to recognise as being almost cripplingly in love with some strange, fragile other life than his own.

It’s moments like these that he realises there is nothing more terrifying than the notion of his heart walking around in another person’s body, except the realization that his heart is divided among three. Aaron, Jack, Charlie… he’s never felt more vulnerable.

There’s a laugh up the hall, a hurried _shhshhh_ , and his eyes snap open.

And it clicks.

_Oh._

He smiles, kisses his daughter goodnight, and slips from his room to find the rest of his family.

 

* * *

 

The paper is stiff, pleasant to the touch. Hotch relishes the feel of it in his hands for a long second before refolding and relinquishing it to Jack, who takes it with the wide-eyed kind of care of a boy being offered something infinitely precious to him.

“Can I give it to him now?” he asks, rocking back on the balls of his heels, and he looks so much like Spencer in that moment that Hotch is, for a moment, wordless.

Hotch kneels, making sure Jack is focused for this all-important instant. “You know what this paper means?” he asks, dead serious, and Jack hugs it to his chest and nods.

“Of course. Can I now?”

Footsteps whisper down the hall, followed by paws, and Hal sighs with delight as Spencer and his hare appear in the doorway, looking peculiarly dazed.

Before Hotch can say a word, Jack’s flung himself at the taller man, thrusting the paper at him. “This is for you,” he says, all in one breath, but doesn’t immediately let go when Spencer reaches down for it. “It came in the mail for Dad but it’s for you and I wanted to give it to you myself.”

“Thank you, Jack,” Spencer says absently, unfolding the paper and skimming it, before looking up at Hotch and opening his mouth. There’s a long beat. He looks back down. His eyes widen, and both Hotchners begin to grin. “This is… this…”

“It means now _everyone_ knows you’re my dad!” Jack says with a stifled bounce. Arelys becomes a hare at his feet, proud and excited all at once, reaching a quivering nose to the shell-shocked Aureilo. “It’s official… Pa.”

Spencer lowers the adoption papers—made out to Jack Hotchner- _Reid—_ and seemingly speechless. Hotch moves over, nudging Jack out of the way, and slides his arms around him, pulling him in for the hug he’s been aching for all night. Hal shoves her way in, pressing her muzzle between them and grumbling until Spencer reaches a hand down to stroke across her head. “Surprise,” he says, feeling Spencer go from stiff and shocked in his arms to pliable and giddy, relaxing into his loose-limbed grip and turning his head for a chaste brush of their lips together. “No take-backsies.”

“As if I’d ever want to,” Spencer replies pertly, and slips an arm out to pull Jack into the hug.

Later that night, Hotch is leaning over the sink in the bathroom with his toothbrush in his mouth when Spencer slips in behind him and presses his mouth to the back of Hotch’s neck along with a soft, “I know why we do what we do now.”

“Hmm?” Hotch mumbles around the toothbrush, turning to him and getting an armful of affectionate genius crowding against him.

“To keep them safe,” Spencer says simply, and releases a breath that Hotch suspects he’s been holding in some way since starting again at the BAU months ago. “We do this work to keep them safe. And that’s how we get through it.”

He’s right. There’s nothing more important.

Nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woo, back on the horse! I got a little dissuaded with this universe after some discomforting feedback, but thanks to the lovely Blythechild I'm keen as beans to delve into it once more :) No update schedule as of yet, because I'm heading both into exam period and NaNoWriMo (and I'm also plotting a new Hotch/Reid to take over when In Free Fall finishes), but this should update once a fortnight at the minimum! And with a new art style!
> 
> Excited to be back and hope you guys are too!


	3. An Unfortunate Illness

 

“Are you _sure_ you’re okay with this?” It’s not that Hotch is doubtful of Morgan’s abilities. On the contrary, he’s absolutely sure of the man’s capacity to handle himself when faced with serial killers and armed standoffs.

But leaving him with both of the Hotchner-Reid children for an entire weekend while they celebrate their second wedding anniversary?

There’s not enough Bureau issued training in the world for this.

“Hotch, come on.” Morgan grins widely, supremely self-assured, Charlie in his arms and Jack standing placidly by his side with the most butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth expression Hotch has ever seen on him. “We’re going to be fine. Right, kids?”

Jack grins wider. “Of course,” he chirps. Hotch feels Spencer tense by his side, his own eyes narrowing. Charlie babbles to herself, peering down at Naemaria scooting Tait along the polished floorboards with her nose, just to make the kitten giggle.

“See, we’re fine.” Morgan inches the door shut on them. “Pen’s coming over tonight for dinner and movies. I’m appropriately supervised with your spawn. Now, go. Go! Have fun and do… whatever it is you guys are planning on doing, I don’t want details, _shoo_.”

The door closes resolutely, with Jack shouting _cya_ as he hurtles up to his room to find a toy to show-off to his new captive audience. Charlie waves.

“He has no idea what he’s in for, does he?” Hotch says, turning to his husband. “You did remember to put the chemistry set you bought Jack for Christmas in the attic, right?”

Spencer blinks, looking down at Aureilo. “Did we?” he asks the hare. Hal sighs. “I’m sure we did… I’m sure we at _least_ removed the acids, right?”

Aureilo’s nose is twitching a mile a minute, a sure sign the hare is guilty of something. “Yep, you bet,” he says, bounding down the path. “Oh look, the taxi. No time to check now! Good luck, Derek!”

“This,” Hal murmurs, padding down the path after Hotch, “is why we can never find babysitters.”

“Oh, shh,” Hotch soothes her, watching her gaze drift back to the seemingly peaceful house behind them. “They’ll be fine.”

Surprisingly, they are.

 

* * *

 

In the years they’ve (mostly) spent together, Aaron has been many things. Loving, broken-hearted, angry, reckless, indecisive, protective, carefully and cautiously affectionate.

He has very rarely been romantic. That tends to be Reid’s forte. And not really the movie kind of romantic either, but more of an awkward-attempting kind of romantic that fails more often than not, and rather seems to amuse Aaron no matter how badly it goes.

That changes.

“Aaron, this is…”

Aaron shrugs, looking down almost shyly. There’s a soft kind of longing in his expression when he looks up, some emotion that drains the lines of age from his face and leaves the shadow of the Aaron of old peering out from behind tired eyes. “It’s nothing, Spence,” he says, and steps closer, for once being the one to fold himself into the other man’s arms and curl against him. “It’s something we should have taken the time to do months ago. I’ve missed you.”

Reid understands that. He’s missed him too, despite waking in the same bed as him the mornings they’re home, despite only being up the hall from him when they’re away for work. There’s a distance creeping between them driven by their family and their responsibility and becoming Spencer, Aaron, and children instead of just Spencer and Aaron. So he looks again around the hotel room, a smile teasing his lips and his husband warm and quiet against his chest, and examines the ‘nothing’. The nothing that’s a carefully arranged—and _wonderfully_ childish—selection of cushions and blankets on the rug in front of the TV, piles of DVDs that are evenly split between the things they both love, a coffee table laid out with enough food to get them through the next two days without leaving the room, and… candles.

“Really?” Reid says, watching as Aureilo hops up to sniff at the flickering flame, the light dancing in his amber eyes. “Going all out?”

Aaron chuckles and the sound is deep and rumbles through both their chests. “Mood lighting,” he says, and his expression as turned from soft to hungry. He presses closer, mouths at Reid’s throat, and Reid hears a soft sigh from behind him as Hal pads by and runs her muzzle down Aureilo’s flank happily. “I’m fully intend upon seeing how fast I can distract you from those documentaries.”

Reid turns and quickly examines the DVDs, steadfastly ignoring the teeth nipping at his collarbone and the fingers working at his belt, and not so steadfastly ignoring the suggestion of a hard weight pressing against his thigh. “Four hours, minimum,” he says, probably optimistically, and Aaron laughs again, the kind of laugh that suggests that he absolutely intends upon proving Reid wrong. “I bet I can withstand your—frankly, lewd—attempts to divert me for at least four hours.”

He’s hoping, in all honesty, that he’s wrong.

“Bullshit you can,” Aureilo says, hopping onto the bed and burrowing under the blankets, Hal following. “Good luck.”

They’re right.

He doesn’t even last two.

There’s a penguin doing _something_ intriguing on the screen, but there’s also a mouth working busily around him and Reid is completely torn as to which is the better view, although decidedly more focused on the hot shift of pressure, the teasing flick of a tongue along his shaft, the fine strands of Aaron’s hair between Reid’s fingers as he arches up with a breathy _ah_ and tightens his grip, concentration shattered. Aaron chuckles, a strange sensation that makes Reid’s skin twitch in shock, bracing a wide hand against the line of Reid’s hipbone to press him back down before he can choke him. The weight of Aaron’s head against Reid’s thigh, the tickle of his hair, the suggestion of stubble, the orange flicker of candlelight against naked skin…

Yeah, concentration gone.

“Okay,” Reid breathes, with a sharp exhale as Aaron pulls up and off with a final touch of his tongue along the head, “you win, _you win_.”

“Bored of the penguins?” Aaron purrs, fucking _purrs_ , and slides his way up the length of Reid’s body, his cock hot and sticky along Reid’s leg as he rubs against him like a particularly affectionate cat. “Going to— _ah_.” Reid cuts him off with his mouth, dragging him up where he can reach to kiss him desperately, taking full advantage of the fact that Aaron was talking to slip his tongue into his mouth and taste himself. There’s a hand hooked under his leg, coaxing it up, so Reid obliges by wrapping it around Aaron and using it to draw them closer together, both hissing as their cocks slide together in a delicious line of heat and friction.

“What penguins?” Reid asks, mind short-circuiting moments later as that hand inches around his arse, fingers trailing, teasing, pressing inside him in a slick-sharp push of cold and pressure. They both pause, breathing deeply, Aaron’s eyes heavy-lidded as he watches Reid for the slightest ease of tension suggesting he’s adjusted to the intrusion, before slowly easing in further.

“Good boy,” Aaron hums. His mouth skims Reid’s ear, tongue tracing the lobe, wrapping his lips over it and sucking gently in an exhale of warm air that sends a spark of coiling heat rolling down Reid’s spine to pool heavily between his hips. Somehow, impossibly, he can feel himself getting harder, pressed against any part of Aaron he can reach, making some kind of embarrassing noise that’s a cross between a moan and a whine that makes Aaron shiver and pant heavily against him. “God, fuck. You sound so gorgeous when you moan like that.”

Reid flushes with a mix of arousal and embarrassment. Aaron’s eyes trace the pattern of red working along his bare chest, as Reid glances at the screen. Pauses. The penguins are being interesting again…

There’s another finger roughly added, no hesitation this time, crooking up inside him and pressing against— “Aaron, _fuck_ ,” Reid chokes, twisting in his grip and barely managing to retain some dignity, a tell-tale tightening between his legs and a hot-spark of sharp heat promising that events are going to come to a crashing halt if _that_ happens again.

“Pay attention,” Aaron growls, in his don’t-ignore-me voice, and Reid has never been able to ignore that tone, never. The fingers are gone, slipping free, leaving him aching empty and cold and oddly forlorn, as his husband braces himself over him, rearranges the leg crooked over his back, and—

“Slow, slow,” Reid hisses, closing his eyes against the throbbing kind of pleasure-pain as the blunt forces presses inexorably inside of him. “It’s, ah, slow…”

“Been a while,” chokes Aaron, eyes wide and almost-unfocused, his arms quivering where he’s using them to hold himself up. “Sorry, shit… just… _relax_.”

“Am relaxed,” Reid replies, his voice cracking, lifting his hips slightly to improve the angle and feeling the smooth slide of the cock working its way into him ease as a result. “Oh, there, that’s… _fuck_.”

Aaron grunts, closes his eyes, and sets up a slow stroking pace that’s going to very quickly and irrepressibly take Reid completely apart from the inside out. The hand not bracing him up slides down Reid’s belly to curl around the base of his cock, pads of Aaron’s fingers tracing the silky skin. “Faster?” Aaron asks quietly, tucking his chin against his chest for a second to ease his neck, and Reid wordlessly shakes his head, his words escaping him. “Just like this, then. This is good?” A nod. “Good.” Aaron pushes in, rocks down, laps at Reid’s throat and hums, “Then you’ll come for me soon, love,” and sways his hips easily back into the rhythm.

The words are sharp-edged and set sparks going in the base of Reid’s brain, his breath rushing from his lungs in a harsh wheeze, cock twitching in Aaron’s gentle palm. _Only if you do first_ , he intends upon saying, but what actually slips from his mouth is a shrill, “Yes, probably.”

“Yes, definitely,” Aaron corrects him, and his rhythm doesn’t miss a beat, rocking, working, even as his breath quickens and his eyes glaze and his lips slip open as he focuses every iota of his being on not being the first to break. It’s another gleeful battle to see who can outlast the other, and again, Reid is only too happy to be the one to lose, whimpering out some garbled _now, now, fuck, Aaron, **now** , _and spilling against his husband’s hand and stomach, feeling Aaron groan and shiver, always ridiculously aroused by the sight of Reid coming, by Reid undone. He follows moments later, pulsing hot and filling into him, barely easing up his strokes until his heart is hammering and the blankets under them are warm and sticky with the remains of their coupling. Collapsing in a heavy weight on top of Reid, who grumbles with a half-hearted _hey_ and nuzzles against the sweaty crook of his husband’s neck; almost crushed under his sated weight but oddly comforted to be so.

“I win,” Aaron mumbles against him, slipping out and using his hand to ease Reid slightly sideways out of the wet patch beneath them.

“You always do,” Reid assures him, closing his eyes and just enjoying the moment before one of them breaks and makes for the bathroom. “I love you.”

“Obvious,” whispers a muffled voice from the confines of the bed, where their daemons are tangled cosily together, and Reid can’t even tell _which_ daemon it was.

It’s a long, glorious weekend, with much more of the same, and he can’t imagine even the coming few weeks have anything that could ruin this moment.

 

* * *

 

Attempting to negotiate a pay-rise for his team that they damn well deserve is proving as difficult as always, and the budget committee is giving Hotch hell. Between endless meetings and talks and quibbling over _details_ that have nothing to do with the actual work they do, he’s barely had a moment to himself.

If it’s any consolation, the rest of the team are just as run off their feet trying to get all their case files up to date and submitted, and a week passes without him actually saying more beyond a _good morning_ and a _good night_ to them each night. Both Reid and Morgan are in and out of meetings all day to do with several cases they were heavily involved in, JJ is frantic with the towering pile of paperwork on her desk finally becoming dangerously high, and even Garcia is strained. Lewis is new, drowning in the frantic rush of this time of the year, and it never really gets easier.

Today, he scrapes half an hour for lunch, and he intends upon enjoying it.

“They do understand that we’re highly trained specialists, don’t they?” Hal groans, flopping on the couch in a rare show of irritation with one huge paw over her muzzle. “That our team does actually earn their salaries and then some?”

“Don’t be cranky,” he says to her, as though she’s Jack or Spencer and not a part of himself, and sighs over the sandwich he’d been thinking longingly about for the past two hours but now tastes… dull. Everything, dull.

“We’re _both_ cranky,” Hal grumbles, only this talkative with the door and blinds firmly shut. “I don’t know how Aureilo deals with it when Spence is this moody. You feel _awful_.”

Whatever reply he has is silenced by three noises at once: the door thumping as Rossi requests and then enters without waiting for a reply; his phone beeping a warning that the budget committee is about to meet again over the jet allocation; and, two seconds after, his phone ringing with an ominous _Bush Hill Elementary calling_.

Rossi pauses, cocks an eyebrow, and Hotch scowls at him as he prioritizes the phone and answers with a sharp _Hotchner._

And it’s exactly what he’d worried it would be.

_Can you pick Jack up as soon as possible? We’re afraid he’s really quite unwell._

“Can Jessica…?” Rossi asks, cautious, with Eris keeping one nervous eye on Hal’s bristling fur. Hotch shakes his head, kneading his knuckles into his eyes in a rare show of stress.

“She’s out of town. Is Reid—”

There’s a doleful hoot from Eris as Rossi replies with an almost apologetic, “Just left with Morgan. Look, you’re—” Hotch’s phone beeps with a second _you’re needed_ warning _,_ sending his blood pressure skyrocketing with it. “—needed. How about I go get Jack? I’m mostly ahead anyway.” He’s lying, Hotch can tell, but Rossi’s made a career out of always only handing in the bare minimum of what’s required when it comes to paperwork. “I’ll stick some soup and water into him, prop him in front of the TV with a bowl and a blanket, and bammo. Insta-happy kiddo. Happy-ish. I’ll even take some paperwork with me and work from there.”

“Dave, I can’t ask this—”

Rossi cuts him off again. “You’re not asking. I’m offering. Come on, how often do I get to be Uncle Rossi?”

Another warning beep. “Grandpa Rossi, more like it,” Hal murmurs, earning a hiss and a _that’s enough of that, thank you fluffy_ , from Eris.

“Okay,” Hotch says finally, guilty, glancing at his watch. “Thanks, Dave.”

Dave waves his hand. “No worries,” he calls back, grabbing the house-keys Hotch offers him and vanishing out the door. “You can buy me a drink later!”

“Bet he wants something pretentious and expensive,” Hal says, and Hotch considers that maybe she’s spending just a little too much time around Aureilo.

 

* * *

 

His phone is humming in his pocket.

Humming _loudly._

“Dr. Reid, do you need to take that?” asks the lawyer across the table from him, and he stammers out a rushed _no, no, sorry,_ fumbling to turn it off.

_Bright Start Learning Centre calling_

_9+ missed calls Bright Start Learning Centre_

_1 Message Received: Dr. Reid, regarding your daughter, Charlie…_

“I…” he looks up, and the lawyer is frowning. “I do have to take this, I’m sorry. My daughter…”

The frown vanishes and the man glances at the clock. “Never mind,” he says, closing the file with a wry smile. “It’s getting late anyway. We can reschedule if need be. Thank you for your time, Dr. Reid. My client will be very pleased with these findings.”

Reid mumbles something that might be a thank you, mind already focused on the phone as he almost stumbles over Aureilo on his way out of the room.

“Oh, Dr. Reid! We’ve been trying to reach you all afternoon. We’re afraid it looks like Charlie has chickenpox. Are you able to collect her immediately?”

“Oh boy,” says Aureilo.

 

* * *

 

It’s almost six pm by the time the budget committee releases him, and he walks out to find JJ waiting. “Shouldn’t you be home already?” he asks, feeling Hal bump against the back of his leg with an exhausted huff at his sudden stop. “Is something wrong?”

She smiles and the smile is half-amused, half-sympathetic, and he just _knows_ he’s not going to like what comes next.

“Spence rang about three hours ago in an absolute panic,” she says, Kailo shifting his wings on her collar. “Rossi shortly before. I’m afraid the kids have chicken pox; both of them.” She pauses. “You may actually want to be quite quick in getting home, because apparently the only person more neurotic about childhood illnesses than Spencer is _Rossi_. I think he’d half convinced himself they needed immediate medical care within ten seconds of seeing a spot.”

“Fantastic,” Hotch breathes, settling his briefcase on his arm and sliding his phone out of his pocket with one-hand. He’d had it off, knowing any work emergencies could reach him through the unit in the meeting room, and as it flickers to life it immediately begins to buzz with a bevy of missed calls and texts. “How bad are they?”

JJ smiles. The sympathy is back. “Jack’s looks mild enough, from the four dozen pictures Rossi sent,” she says, and Hotch _almost_ laughs at the mental image of the normally unflappable Dave resorting to panicked MMS’s to assure himself that his friend’s son was okay. “Charlie is absolutely miserable though, and you know how Spence is when either of the kids are upset. Not all of the tears are the children’s.”

Hotch closes his eyes, takes one more breath of what he knows is going to turn out to be a _long_ sleepless night, and says, “Thank you, JJ. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Bright and early,” she replies, with a grimace. “Good luck.”

As he passes, he swears he hears a whispered _you’ll need it_ from the butterfly on her shirt.

 

* * *

 

Midnight comes and goes, and brings absolutely no relief for either of the miserable children, or their equally miserable parents.

“Just let her sleep,” Aaron snaps, seeing Reid beginning to gravitate towards Charlie’s room where her sobs have turned hiccupping and choked. “She’s not going to rest if you keep hovering.”

Reid stops, feeling his face flush with embarrassment at the unusually harsh rebuke. “She’s _not_ sleeping though,” he protests, and Aureilo is curled by her door with his ear quivering and eyes wide. In the room up the hall, Jack calls out in a scratchy voice for his dad. “She’s upset and _itchy_.” He’s itchy just thinking about it, his own head aching in sympathy and exhaustion, all of them already beat from the hellish two weeks at work.

“Dad!” howls Jack, and bursts into tears. Reid winces as Aaron’s face crumples, his own chest tightening at the misery in their son’s voice.

“Just leave her for a bit and see if she settles,” Aaron says, and vanishes up to Jack’s room with Hal padding gloomily after.

Reid waits until the door slips shut behind them, and heads for Charlie. She’s a red-faced, snotty mess of a baby in the crib, her eyes rheumy and one hand free of the mittens they’d inexpertly tied on to stop her from scratching at the lesions spreading across her body. “Oh love,” he murmurs, reaching for the calamine lotion Rossi had gone out and bought _bucket-loads_ of. “Look at you. If it helps, the clinical course of varicella in healthy children is generally mild.”

It doesn’t appear to help. Tait howls along with her, scratching at his belly with sharp claws.

The door creaks behind them. “She’s _despondent_ , Aaron,” Reid snaps, tensing before the rebuke about his parenting can be tossed at him by his tired and frustrated husband. “She’s not going to go to sleep.”

Quiet for a moment. “I know,” Aaron says finally, moving closer and reaching a hand into the crib. Charlie grabs at it with her free hand, clinging tightly and quietening, just a little, at the knowledge her parents are close. Reid looks down, finds himself on the receiving end of the most accusing brown-eyed gaze _ever_ as his daughter quite clearly wonders why her parents aren’t stopping the itching (except not really, because logically she probably doesn’t understand cause and effect at this point in development), and withers inwardly. The headache building grows just a little, leaving him hot and clammy and just achingly weary.

“I can’t bear them sick,” he says, picking her up carefully. The lesions have spread to her belly now, up her chest, red and sore where her diaper has rubbed against them around her waist. Tait whines and snuggles up to Hal’s nudging nose as she cuddles him. “I can’t bear _this_. How often is this going to happen?”

Aaron almost smiles. Almost. “Enough that you’ll adjust,” he replies, pulling them both into a sticky, calamine-scented hug. “I’m sorry for snapping. Just… worn-out. Maybe you should bathe her again. She’s going to work herself up too much unless we get her sleeping soon.”

Reid nods and does just that, closing the bathroom door and narrowing his eyes against the harsh light above. Charlie whines and shutters her eyes as well, clinging to him as he fights to strip her sweaty-sticky shirt from her blistering body. Aureilo is there, talking, saying _something_ , but Reid doesn’t really listen through the thump of his brain protesting the light as he runs the bath and adds the oatmeal JJ instructed him to. As soon as she’s in, Charlie kicks and giggles, delighted despite the itchiness and the late hour and the purple-rings around her eyes. “Ba ba, da,” she says, matter-of-factly, and he braces his hand against her back, his chin on the edge of the bath, and mumbles something back to her. It’s _really_ hot in here.

Aureilo hops up onto the edge of the bath, perching catlike there as Charlie and Tait mutely splash each other. “You’re going to fall,” Reid murmurs into the bath, right as he does just that with a _splash_ , drenching them all. Oddly, as soon as he’s in, he just huddles down, fur slick and eyes closed.

For a heartbeat, Reid feels minutely better.

Ah.

Oh dear.

“Hold her,” he tells his daemon, and as the hare takes his place in keeping Charlie sitting upright in the gluggy bath, he stands and strips, already sure what he’s going to find. “Ah. Aureilo, have we had chicken pox before?”

The rash of spots across his lower abdomen answer the question before his hare can, with a snide, “Obviously not, genius. You’d think _you’d_ remember something like that. Oh, we feel _awful_. Why do we feel so awful?”

Ah.

… Oh _dear_.

 

* * *

 

Jack is _finally_ asleep, and Hotch goes looking for his husband and sickly daughter.

He finds them.

Spencer is sitting on the floor of the bathroom in just his boxers, knees to his chest and looking downright shattered. Aureilo, Tait, and Charlie are watching from the bath, all of them floppy.

Ignoring the jolt of guilt at the hang-dog expression of everyone in the room, Aaron inches in with a soft, “Are you okay?” He really shouldn’t have snapped earlier. It was completely out of line, spurred by frustration, and Spencer always takes things said in the heat of the moment and hoards them close to hurt himself with later.

Spencer peers up at him, mouth quirked oddly and face flushed. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, and Hotch blinks, because _he’s_ not the one who should be apologising here. At least, that’s what he thinks, until Spencer lowers his knees to display his bare chest and stomach. And the spots decorating them. “I honestly… well, guess even my memory is flawed.” He says that with a smile and a groggy laugh, but there’s a desperate kind of _please don’t question_ _that_ inflected in his tone, and Hotch won’t because his husband doesn’t like attention being drawn to the fact that the only person who’d really been in charge of Spencer when he was a child, was Spencer himself.

Instead, he just swallows back the horror at the sight of those spots and resigns himself to a far more exhausting night than expected. “Bed,” he orders instantly, leaning down to heave his husband off the floor. His skin is hot, clammy, and he sways into Hotch’s arms. _Damnit_ , he should have realized he was sick as soon as he’d walked into the house and the glazed-eyed Spencer had dashed up to him half panicked, with Aureilo oddly insensible around his heels. Before he can protest, there’s a feverish genius huddled against his chest, eyes closed and mouth tucked against his collarbone. “However dreadful you’re feeling; it’s going to get worse. I’ll make an appointment tomorrow for the doctor. You should have said you were getting sick.”

“Thought I was just tired,” Spencer slurs against his throat, and Hal slides through to take up a stance next to the bath and the hare within. “Look after them, I’ll come back for Aureilo,” Hotch tells her, smiling at the serious-faced Charlie and practically dragging Spencer from the ensuite bathroom to deposit him boldly into the bed. Rolling him into the blankets is an easy task, made slightly more difficult by Spencer’s tendency to cling when he’s unhappy. “You need me awake.”

“I need you not dying of chickenpox, preferably,” Hotch corrects him, before taking advantage of his sluggish reaction time to drag his boxers down slim hips and examining the skin bared beneath. “Congratulations; don’t scratch or you’re _really_ going to be unhappy tomorrow.” Spencer looks confused, before craning his neck to peer down at himself and the already oozing rash of spots working their way up from his groin. Taking pity on him, Hotch jabs his leg to get him to lift it, flicking the boxers off and aside. “Don’t wear these. They’ll be much worse by the morning and the elastic will irritate it.”

The half-dismayed, half-horrified expression he receives in return would be funny if Hotch wasn’t already counting down the hours until they’re due back at work—now one down—and the knowledge that within those few hours, this is probably going to hit Spencer like a ton of bricks. Which means, they _still_ need someone to look after the kids. And the husband.

There’s a splash from the bathroom and a sad whimper from Charlie. Hotch sighs. “Stay,” he tells Spencer, who seems entirely okay with that command, and goes to collect his oatmealy daughter. And oatmealy daemons; both Aureilo and Tait are liberally coated in it, and Hal has large clumps on her muzzle where she’d been gently gripping Charlie’s hands with her mouth to stop her scratching.

The next few hours pass in a haze of exhaustion. He forces ibuprofen onto Spencer to make him sleep after towel-drying the listless hare and scolding him for scratching. Puts Charlie back to bed with nothing but a light shirt and a liberal coating of calamine. By that time, Jack is awake again, miserable, so it’s another bath for him, more calamine, put him back to bed. Spencer wakes up and attempts to help; Hotch patiently drags him back to the bedroom and gently daubs the calamine onto the sorest looking spots until the man stops complaining about being coddled and falls asleep under his hands.

Hal is drooping, Hotch is drooping, and they have an hour before their alarm goes off for work. They lay carefully next to their husband and the hare uncharacteristically cuddling tight against his chest, wincing when they note how quickly the blisters are working up his torso, and close their eyes…

Only for a howl to issue from the bedroom down the hall as Charlie wakes up again.

“I regret everything,” Hal mumbles, staggering up with her eyes still shut and almost rolling from the bed. Hotch doesn’t dignify that with an answer.

 

* * *

 

“Death is preferable,” says Aureilo, and Reid ignores him in favour of painstakingly making his way to the kitchen pantry, every step reminding him just how _itchy_ everything has gotten and how tired he is and how— “Do you think Hal will do it if I beg her? She loves me, she wouldn’t let me suffer like this. Let _us_ suffer like this.”

“I’ll do it in a minute if you don’t shut up,” Reid mumbles, swinging open the pantry door and staring blankly in. What did he come here for? Was there a reason?

“Charlie’s lunch,” says Jack helpfully, padding in from the living room and itching at his belly, guiltily pulling his shirt down when Aureilo thumps his hind paw at him. “Do you need help? I can help. I’m barely sick at all.”

Reid stares blankly at him. What does Charlie have for lunch? Does it require any of the things Hotch says are inappropriate for an eight-year-old: heat, knives… acids?

“We can have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?” Jack offers, his face turning worried under the rash of spots. “I can do those. I think you should sit down, Pa. You look… yuck.”

“I’ll…” Reid begins, about to argue, but a wash of hot/dizzy/tired/ _sick_ trickles from his head to his toes and takes his balance with it, “… supervise.” And he does. Sort of. With his head on his arms at the counter, one eye on Jack happily putting about another bread-thickness worth of jelly on their sandwiches and carefully cutting them into triangles with the butter knife.

“Eat the crusts,” Aureilo says, from his crumpled spot under Reid’s feet, and Jack pouts. “JJ says they’re important.”

“They’re really not,” Reid and Jack both mutter at once, as Jack pours a glass of water and helpfully nudges it towards Reid’s hand. “You should probably have a drink. Dad said to make sure we drink lots.”

Charlie wails from her playpen in the living room. Reid whimpers as the sound cuts straight through his head.

Death is preferable.

“Someone’s at the door!” Arelys yells as the doorbell rings, leaping up and dancing in circles around Jack’s feet, clearly already on the mend. “Can we answer it? Can we, can we, come on Jack!”

It takes a beat too long for Reid to register as Jack pelts from the room. “No, wait!” he yelps, leaping up and giving chase, bouncing off the doorframe on the way and catching Jack around the torso with an _ommph_ right as the boy reached for the bolt. “No answering the door without me!”

“Can I answer the door with you?” Jack asks, hanging heavily from Reid’s arm and almost dragging Reid down with him. “I mean, you’re right there.”

“Can _someone_ answer the door?” says a muffled voice from the other side. “Because I have all kinds of good things and I think there’s a gaggle of unhappy people on your side that could use all of them.”

“It’s Garcia,” Aureilo adds unhelpfully, hopping down from the windowsill in the living room and peering around at them. Charlie and Tait watch with interest, both of them having worked their mittens free and scratching unhappily at their bodies.

Reid opens the door desperately, revealing Garcia and Tupelo decked out in bags and bags and… a lot of bags.

“Are you moving in?” Jack asks with interest, still held by Reid. “Hi, Penelope,” he adds after, not wanting to be rude.

“Nurse Garcia at your service,” she says with a wide smile, holding out the bag. “Our glorious leader sent me to essentially kick your pretty little butt back to bed, Mr. Spencer, and spend some time with my lovely little Hotchlets.”

“What’s a Hotchlet?” Jack and Arelys ask, right as Reid whimpers, “Oh my god, thank you,” and steps aside to let her in. “You’re a lifesaver.”

Garcia winks. “Oh baby,” she says, peering at his arms and tsking when she notices where he’s drawn blood from scratching. “That’s what I do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Goddamn, am I struggling with this piece. Fluff is not my natural territory so I keep flip-flopping between 'is this too fluffy, not fluffy enough, am I doing this right, is it boring, god I hate this, god I love Aureilo' and every possible emotion in between, which is basically my attempt to explain why updates for this are so... staggered. WRITING USED TO COME EASY, WHAT HAPPENED. I APOLOGISE. Hopefully I get my mojo back soon!


	4. What We’ve Almost Lost

** **

 

Lately, the conference room had felt more like a revolving door of faces. With Kate leaving, several of them taking time off, Spencer currently in Vegas with the kids, and Lewis just beginning… Hotch looks up to study the people and daemons sitting around the table as they discuss their latest case and thinks of all the people these chairs have seen come and go.

“Are you okay, sir?” Lewis asks. She’s sitting next to Rossi, which creates an intimidating sort of view with both of their hugely predatory bird daemons perched on the chair-backs behind them. Her African harrier hawk, grey and black with a viciously orange face around his hooked beak, rotates his head to eye Hal as the wolfdog sits sedately nearby. “You look pensive.”

“You look like crap,” Rossi booms. Both Eris and Satu jump, their wings ruffling in shared distaste. “Bed too empty?”

“You’d know,” Morgan mutters under his breath, and a chuckle runs around the table. “Hey, how is the kiddo? Enjoying his time off?”

“Enjoying leaving us with all of his paperwork, probably,” Rossi complains. Eris mutters something under her breath that could just as likely be agreeing with him as it could be sticking up for Reid.

JJ makes a disagreeing noise, thoughtfully paging through her own casefiles. “That’s not fair,” she comments mildly. “Reid loves paperwork. I bet he’d have taken some with him, if we’d have let him.”

The chuckle builds again. Hal makes a soft sound, masked by the laughter. Following her gaze, he sees Lewis frowning, her eyebrows lifting as she makes the connection and her eyes flicker to the wedding band around his finger.

“Lewis, could I see you for a moment?” he asks, keen to head this off. It’s an unusual circumstance, and he’s not naïve enough to assume that he can just slide it past any new member of their team, but he’s also supremely hopeful that it isn’t going to drive away a promising recruit. “My office?”

They lead the way, the man and his wolf, and Lewis doesn’t say much as she follows him into the office and closes the door behind her. Satu is perched on her shoulder, giving her a strangely lopsided look that Rossi, with his wider build, doesn’t suffer from when carrying his daemon. Hotch settles, examining the heavy cuff she wears on one arm to move her daemon onto her wrist when she needs to, and the shift of muscles from bearing the weight. The visible signs her daemon have left on her physique. He wonders if his wolfdog is as obvious on him.

“Dr. Reid and I are married,” he says firmly, not letting the topic of this meeting slide. “I expect that that knowledge will not obstruct you from working with this team.”

Lewis nods, her eyes skimming the room and settling on a photo of Reid holding Charlie set proudly on the bookcase. Aaron Hotchner isn’t one to hide away his family in order to appear respectable, no matter how much that may cripple him in certain areas of his career. And he’s under no illusions that it hasn’t hurt them, both of them. He doubts either will rise beyond the BAU.

The knowledge of that burns.

“I know,” Lewis says calmly, the only thing that surprises him. “I did my research, sir, before I started here. It doesn’t bother me. I… I _am_ curious about one thing though, if it, ah… isn’t out of line to ask.”

Hotch nods, encouraging the line of thought.

“How do you do it?” she asks bluntly, lifting a hand to run her finger down her bird’s barred chest. “Work so closely in such dangerous work with a man you love? My partner… I couldn’t see him in the firing line and keep my composure, let alone send him there.” As though she realizes how her questioning must sound, she adds a soft, ‘sir,’ on the end, and Satu clicks his beak worriedly.

But Hotch smiles wearily, banishing the many, _many_ images of Reid in danger, Reid dying, Reid hurt, and says softly, “I separate my personal feelings from my work. As we all do.”

_Some better than others._

 

* * *

 

“Jack, honey, come and read to your family,” Diana orders the boy, shifting aside to make room on the bed for her grandson. Charlie is dozing on her lap, one chubby hand fisted through Sonnet’s scruffy fur, and Reid watches quietly from across the room with Aureilo curled around his socked feet. Jack bounces up, reaching for the book Diana hands him and frowning at it.

“I don’t know how to read this,” he complains, crinkling his nose. “It’s got poetry in it.”

“It has poetry,” Diana corrects. “And you’ll never learn to love it if you don’t try it, Spencer.”

There’s a long beat where Spencer forgets to breathe and he feels Aureilo’s heart skip against his leg, but Jack giggles.

“Grandma, I’m Jack!” he exclaims, and Charlie wakes up at the laugh and blinks sleepily at the light in Diana’s bright room.

Diana laughs, her voice wavering. “I know that…” She looks to Spencer and smiles, trying to be reassuring, but his heart doesn’t slow. “You just look so much like him… now, come here, I’ll help you. Repeat the poem after I do and tell me what you think it’s about. ‘ _Here lies, whom hound did ne’er pursue…’_ ”

“Here lies who hound did… um…” Jack looks to Spencer, his face furrowed. “I don’t know.” There’s a whine in his voice, the same that picks up when he’s struggling with his homework, and Spencer swallows.

“ _‘Nor swifter greyhound follow, whose foot ne’er tainted morning dew, nor ear heard huntsman’s hallo’_ ,” Reid finishes gently. “It’s about a hare. A wild Jack-hare. Mom, he’s not me…”

It was about the death of that hare. _Epitaph on a Hare,_ William Cowper. He’d always found it beautifully macabre.

“Nonsense,” Diana says firmly. “Jack is an exceedingly bright boy. Poetry is not beyond the young. How old is Miss Charlie-girl now?”

“Fifteen months,” Reid murmurs, absently checking his phone. Three days into their visit, he’s missing Hotch, worried about the team, wondering what they’re doing…

“She’s quiet,” Diana comments, and Reid winces. “You were quiet as a baby. Always so quiet, so focused… books brought you out of your shell. Whether or not you were reading them, you did love to stare at the pages. I believe you were, despite what people say.” She’s desperately clinging to what a grandma _should_ be asking, staying as normal as possible, and it’s painful to listen to.

“She talks,” Jack says, sensing the strain and interjecting in an attempt to help. “She says lots.” He reaches out to pat at his sister’s wild brown curls, catching her attention. “Charlie, what’s Arelys?”

His daemon jumps up obediently onto the bed, a red coated spaniel today with floppy paws and a wide grin. “What am I, Charlie?” she peeps, her voice so delightfully young next to the grey furred and diminished cheetah that licks at her fur.

“Dog,” Charlie says shyly after a long moment. She glances to Reid for confirmation, beaming when he smiles at her. “‘Lis dog.” Arelys wags her entire rear end in excitement before shifting form with a flicker, causing a bark of laughter from Diana as there’s suddenly a stumbling lamb on her bed. Charlie laughs too, just because they are, and cheers, “Baa sheep!”

“Genius,” Diana says proudly, and hugs both of her grandchildren close, pressing her hollowed cheek to Charlie’s chubby one and ignoring Jack grumbling at the embrace. “My entire family are geniuses.”

“She doesn’t look well,” Aureilo whispers, leaning his paws on Reid’s knees as he stands. “Spence…”

“Shh,” Reid soothes, stroking his hare with a hand that’s steady. He keeps a smile pasted on his face because Charlie looks to him constantly for behavioural cues, and he keeps his voice low: “Not in front of Jack.” His phone beeps in his pocket.

**From: Aaron – _How is everything?_**

His response is fast, his ears attuned to the laughter on the bed— _boo bird—she’s a goose, you goose—boo, ‘ack! —_ **To: Aaron _– Everything is fine. We all miss you._** And he pauses on the last line, before hitting send. **_Mom is doing great._**

It feels like lying, but it’s better than worrying them.

 

* * *

 

**From: Spence – _Everything is fine. We all miss you. Mom is doing great._**

“He’s lying,” says Hal immediately after Hotch tilts the phone towards her. “He’s such a terrible liar. Why does he even try?”

Opening his mouth to reply, the door to his office is slammed open with terrifying force and Rossi tumbles through. Hotch blinks. Checks the clock. It’s afterhours, the man in the doorway smells like whiskey and sweat—whiskey is a usual scent, the sweat is something new considering how fastidious Dave usually is—and his eyes are white-ringed with fear. Eris bursts in with him and shrieks once; a haunting howl of the hunting owl, and the sound sends a jolt of cold slamming down Hotch’s spine.

“Aaron, help,” Dave pants, stumbling forward. He’s shaking helplessly and Hal and Hotch surge forward as one. Hotch catches him before he can fall, hands roaming across his wrinkled shirt for an injury, any kind of injury, mind already racing over what could have happened. Hal rears onto her great hind legs, as tall as a man when she stands like this, her nose reaching for the frantic owl to coax her from the air. “Please, shit, _fuck_ , I need help…”

“Where are you hurt? Hotch demands, pushing him towards the couch. Terror is thrumming through him behind the steady calm he’s perfected. “David, look at me. Breathe. Where are you hurt?”

Dave stares at him with huge, glazed eyes, the panic receding slightly. “I’m not,” he stammers, shaking his head slowly. “I’m… my ex-wife, Hayden, she…” And he sinks, slowly, onto the couch behind. “She… _we_ … have a daughter. A fucking daughter, Aaron, _a child_. My child. My god. I didn’t know, she never told me!”

That was…

Not what Hotch had been expecting.

“Oh,” Hotch says carefully, and Hal whines with confusion. “That’s… unexpected.”

Hands move up to scrub furiously at Dave’s face as he shakes his head again, any colour he’s regained draining slowly from his skin. “That’s not, I’m…” he manages, before heaving in a slow, uneven breath that’s almost a sob. “Hayden just called me. She’s… her name is Joy, and she hasn’t come home in a few days. They can’t find her. I didn’t even know about her, and she’s _missing_.”

The silence is thick and suffocating.

Hotch reaches for his phone. “I’ll call the team,” he says firmly. “Everything is going to be okay, Dave.”

But the stare he gets in return is answer enough. They all know: it might not be.

 

* * *

 

Mom is having a good day, and Reid can’t help but feel _content_ somehow, as he watches her walking Charlie through the playground. Charlie is solemn, always, so she clings to her grandma’s hand and stares with wide hazel eyes at every passing child or daemon. Sonnet is sprawled lazily under the bench Reid is perched on, Aureilo snuggled against his chest and one amber eye locked on Tait’s nervous figure behind them.

Jack kicks on the swings, his eyes hungry and on Reid, and Reid knows that look. Chuckling, he stands and walks over, hands in his pockets and wary of the sun overhead. The last thing they need are sunburns, any of them.

“Need a hand?” he asks his son casually, holding both out and waggling his fingers.

“Please,” says Jack with a grin, probably too old to be happy about getting pushed on the swing-set, but delighted to be so anyway. “Reckon you can swing me all the way over?” He kicks his feet easily to help gain height, and Reid’s heart skips every time the chains click and rattle at the peak.

“That’s not actually possible,” he’s sad to inform his son, and Jack pouts. “And even if it was, could you imagine your dad if he discovered I’d done that? I’d be sleeping on the couch for a month.”

Jack sighs loudly, the sound caught by the whistle of wind as he soars higher. Reid calculates his trajectory quickly as the boy swings his legs to make the seat wobble, and steps away before he gets a sneaker to the jaw. “It’d be the acids all over again,” Jack says morosely, in the kind of voice that suggests that his poor dad has no idea what is actually appropriate for eight-year-olds. “He’s no fun. But if you do it anyway, I’ll let you sleep in my room.”

“He’s tons of fun,” Reid says loyally, right as his phone rings. “Uh oh.”

“Uh oh,” Jack repeats, slamming his heels into the bark and sending chips skidding everywhere, almost showering two girls with sheep daemons and furious expressions. “It’s not _work_ , is it?” He says work the same way Reid would say _internet_ or Hotch would say _budgetary meetings_ or Charlie would say _bath_. Unhappily and with lots of barely restrained sass.

“It’s Dad,” Reid says carefully—because that could be work _or_ family, and he’s not willing to commit to an answer yet—and answers the phone with a bright, “Good morning, love. The children are—”

“You need to come home,” Aaron says, and there’s the thinnest thread of worry to his voice that has Reid already gesturing to Jack to _go get your sister, go go go_. It’s the ‘danger’ voice, and Reid wants his gun, his team, his children by his side _right the fuck now_. “There’s been an incident.”

But it’s not their code—any variation of _we’ve got a green case_ would send either one of them who’d received it running, kids in tow—so he takes a deep breath and asks, “Is anyone hurt?”

The kids are moving back towards him now, Jack tugging impatiently on Charlie’s hand as a sheepdog shaped Arelys nips at Tait’s rump. Mom is watching his face, her own blankly suspicious.

“Dave has… Dave’s wife contacted him,” Aaron says, his voice strained. “Apparently, he has a daughter he never knew about.”

Reid blinks twice, knowing the shock on his face is blatant. “Uh,” he says, but Aaron isn’t done.

“She’s missing.”

The shock fades, replaced with determination. “What do we know?” he asks, already turning to the car. Aureilo is rounding the others, ignoring their confused complaints. Only Charlie is quiet, in Jack’s arms now as he picks her up to quicken her stumbling toddler gait.

“Not enough. Just come home—Jessica will meet you at the airport to pick up the kids, and you can head straight to the Bureau. We need you here, Spence, I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Reid says. “Tell Dave… tell Dave…” He doesn’t know what to say. He glances back at his children and can’t imagine what could _possibly_ make him feel better if the worst was to happen. He suspects that there isn’t anything that could.

“I know,” Aaron says simply. “I love you. Tell the kids I miss them. See you soon.”

“I love you, too,” Reid says to an empty line. Aaron is gone.

 

* * *

 

Dave is a mess, and his ex-wife isn’t much better. Hayden is a stunning woman, gorgeous despite how flustered she is, and her accent is compelling. Hotch can see what would have drawn Dave to her all those years ago. Her daemon is a springhare; a honey coloured creature standing on kangaroo-like hind legs as it hops nervously around the waiting room, a long bushy-tipped tail held high.

On the table between them, there are endless pictures of the girl Dave never had the chance to know. Her as a baby, as a child, as a teenager. Graduating.

Getting married. Having her own child.

A baby now grown, and Dave missed it all. Might never have a chance to have it back.

Hotch’s heart is breaking for his friend, and Hal stays firm by Dave’s side and doesn’t leave him. Eris is a huddle ball of miserable feathers in her human’s lap, both of them told to _sit_ and to stop storming around the Bureau demanding the world be torn from the top down in search of their daughter.

“Ms. Montgomery?” JJ asks, popping her head in. “Can we see you? We want to get down every location Joy could possibly have visited in the lead-up to her disappearance. Shawn is on his way here to help as well.”

Hayden nods and follows JJ out, her head held high. On her way past, her springhare pauses, reaching a single tentative paw up to Eris’s beak. The owl brushes against it, crooning gently; and it’s a scene so cautiously hopeful that Hotch’s breath catches.

Then the creature scurries away, the door closes behind them, their footsteps fade away.

“She was investigating a series of missing college students, convinced they were related,” Dave said blankly as soon as the room was empty, sliding out a file thick with notes. “Her notebook she used to interview people is missing. So she was seeing someone about it. So she could be…”

“Don’t,” Hotch suggests gently, moving forward and crouching by the coffee table with a crack of his knees. “This is a good thing, Dave, despite how it seems. If we can prove those murders are linked, it’s serial. Then it’s ours. We’ll have full cooperation with law enforcement, and we _will_ find her.” Distantly, he’s aware that he’s talking to Dave like he’s a friend, not a victim, and he’d never be this optimistic with anyone else on the bad end of one of their cases.

But Dave looks heartened, his posture straightening. “Look at this,” he says, and slides a photo out. It’s large, glossy. A wedding shot of Joy holding her daemon on the steps of a church, aglow in the setting sun. Hotch studies her, seeing very little of Dave in her except, perhaps, in the hint of mischief in her eyes. Then he looks at her daemon. “Hayden never told her about me,” Dave continues breathlessly, his blunt fingers tracing the daemon on Joy’s arm reverently. “Not a thing. Not about my work, my books, my… daemon. And _look_.”

The daemon on Joy’s arm is the mirror image of the one in Dave’s lap. Eris, through and through, right down to the cockily upturned beak.

“Blood always tells,” Hotch says, despite not being entirely sure of that himself. He’s not much of his father, after all, and there’s nothing of the elder Hotchner in Jack. In fact, Hotch is starting to have the weirdest sensation—after tidying his son’s room and finding more science books than comics—that Jack might be more _Reid_ than Hotchner.

“Good,” Dave says savagely. “Because I hope she’s giving that fucker _hell_. Just like a Rossi.”

 

* * *

 

“It’s a trap,” Diana had howled as Reid had tugged Charlie away, lifting her into his arms and feeling her curl against his body with her face trembling against his throat. “Please, Spencer, don’t take them back there. They’re not safe!”

“Grandma, it’s okay!” Jack had tried to soothe her, and Reid looks down at his son now and swallows hard, seeing the shade of his own childhood drawn on his face. Despite his attempt to lay with his head tilted away so Reid couldn’t see the tears on his face, he’s asleep now with his neck lolling and the red around his eyes is visible, even if the ratty tear-tracks in Arelys’ fur weren’t. _Please stop. Please stop. What’s wrong with her, Pa? Why is she so scared?_

_Why is she so angry?_

“She’s not doing well, Dr. Reid,” the doctors had explained after, while a nurse had tried to calm a hysterical Charlie and Jack clung grimly to his waist. “We’re not sure why her medication isn’t working…”

They wanted his expertise. They needed it. Mom needed it.

_Send me her charts_ , he’d ended up compromising, his head rattling from Charlie’s increasingly panicked screams and Jack’s breathing beginning to hiccup as he took Charlie’s panic and fed off it. _I’ll look them over from home. Thank you._

_Bye Mom,_ he’d said—without the children there—and she’d almost slapped him. For the first time in her life, she’d raised her hand to him and there was something dark in her eyes. Sonnet had snarled, his back arched, but Aureilo had stared him down without flinching. The only thing that would hurt her more than finding out she’d struck him was knowing he’d flinched away from the expectation of it.

“Don’t you dare hurt my grandchildren,” she’d said with a calm her face didn’t betray, and something inside him had twisted and twisted and twisted and splintered. Greenstick fracture. Broken all the way up.

He’d run.

The plane shudders under them, hitting turbulence. Aureilo skitters between his legs, always uncomfortable in the small under-seat compartment provided for small-medium sized daemons.

“Pa?” Jack asks blearily. Charlie sleeps, exhausted. “Is Grandma gonna be okay?”

Reid swallows twice, then wraps his arm around the boy. Tugging him close, they huddle together, this wary little family. He thinks of himself, at Jack’s age, and he thinks of himself a little older and he knows he can’t expose his children to the childhood he had. The fear, the tension, the lies. “Grandma gets confused,” he explains gently, searching for the words to try and explain everything Jack had seen today. “She loves you, and Charlie, so, _so_ much but sometimes her brain gets… tangled around that love. With thoughts and feelings that aren’t really there, because of her illness. And that can make her angry, and frustrated, just like you get angry and frustrated when things that should make sense don’t.”

Jack nods against his shoulder. “I don’t think we should tell Daddy,” he says with a pinch in his voice, and Reid feels sick and small and helpless again. “Because he doesn’t like people who get angry and I don’t want him mad at Grandma when it’s her brain and not her.”

“Daddy understands,” Reid says carefully. “But… perhaps let me tell him, okay?”

And Jack nods again, relaxing. Reid closes his eyes and thinks of Rossi and Aaron and his mom and worries and worries until his own brain is knotting itself into a tight little ball and— “Pa?”

“Mm?”

“If I get sick like that, will you still love me?” Jack says it calmly, like he’s just reassuring himself of something he already knows the answer to, but when Reid’s eyes snap open and he stares down, Jack leans past, looks at his sister, and adds: “What about Charlie? You won’t make us go live with Grandma, will you?”

“No,” Aureilo says sharply, speaking once again for his human who can’t. “Never, Jack. Absolutely never. Your home is _always_ with us.”

 

* * *

 

Dave stands close enough to him that their shoulders brush on every exhale, and Hotch can hear the ragged huff of his breathing despite the muted sounds of cameras clicking and whirring in the crowded room. The podium creaks as JJ leans on it, the mic whistles and hisses, and Shawn is crying. Kai, by his side with his small hand threaded through his daddy’s larger one, is silent and staring about the room curiously. His other hand clings to that of a young chimp, his daemon just as quiet, just as worried. His father’s daemon looms behind protectively, a deer with her ears cocked back and nose twitching.

Eris sits between Hal’s front legs, watching everything in the room at once with the wolf’s heart beating steadily behind her tufted ears. A firm comfort.

“Please,” Hayden is saying, her voice firm and strained all at once. “All we want is to bring my daughter home to her son. Joy is a kind and intelligent woman. She’s always helping people. She goes out of her way to help people, to help anyone who needs her.”

She keeps going, but Hal’s ears have perked, her muzzle swinging around to the door where Reid is sidling through. Clothes ruffled and hair wild, he looks pale and tired and strained with Aureilo skittering slowly around his feet. Hotch brushes his fingers against Dave’s arm, a comforting touch for the man listening to a daughter he’d never met being described for him, and walks towards his husband.

“How is he?” Reid asks immediately, his voice achingly husky. Aureilo, for once, is silent and withdrawn; Hotch makes a note to get Hal to talk to him.

“Terrified,” Hotch says bluntly, and aches to pull his husband close. Not a flicker of this shows on his face, he knows, his expression just as cool and collected as always. “How any of us would be. It’s not looking good, Reid. All we have is Joy travelling to meet with a woman who said she was being stalked. They left the house together, and neither returned. Garcia dug up some grainy footage, but…”

“It’s not enough,” Reid murmurs. “If Joy stumbled between a focused obsessive fixation with this other woman… her kidnapper may have taken them both to avoid Joy being a witness. That’s not… that’s not good, Hotch. She’s collateral.”

They already knew that. “Yes, but don’t tell Dave that,” he says. Reid raises his eyebrows, and Hotch sees the question painted there. _Is he here as a profiler or a victim?_ Hotch doesn’t know the answer to that. Instead, he diverts: “How’s Diana?”

Reid twitches, his gaze slipping for just a moment. Inwardly, Hotch sighs. Lying to a profiler is stupid. Lying to a profiler you’re _married_ to is stupider. “Fine,” Reid says briskly, moving past to where JJ is wrapping up the press conference. “Her medication isn’t working well at the moment, though. I may need to help, once we have Joy home safe.”

“Whatever she needs,” Hotch says to his retreating back, but he isn’t sure his husband hears. If Aureilo does, he doesn’t react.

 

* * *

 

It’s ridiculously simple when it hits.

Reid finds JJ with Rossi, and there’s a boy in Rossi’s lap. A little boy with curly hair and dark skin and wide, worried eyes. Reid pauses for a moment, his brain whirring and spitting out the word _grandson_ which makes him think of Jack which makes him think of—he shoves it all away and turns to JJ, Rossi’s eyes on them both.

“We’re coming at this wrong,” he says quickly. “We keep looking at Joy, and the man who took her—it’s never been about her. It’s about _Bahni._ And the man who took her, to stalk her—she said she was being stalked—that often involves some kind of contact.”

“Not always,” JJ disagrees, but not with force. She’s testing him, seeing where his mind will take him if she presses, and he rises smoothly to the challenge. “He could be anyone. He could have seen her at the chemist, on the street, in a lecture… there’s not always reason behind obsessive behaviour.”

“Statistically, he has some kind of continued contact,” Reid says firmly. “And she’s a college student—that narrows down what kind of contacts we can look at. Added onto that, they went missing on campus—that narrows it down further. He’d have a vehicle, something big enough to get two girls into, plus daemons. Likely a van. And something that people wouldn’t be surprised or suspicious of seeing around a campus at midnight—”

“Food delivery,” Rossi and JJ chime as one, both surging to their feet. JJ is already saying, “I’ll get Garcia to check the camera feeds for registrations,” as Rossi carries the boy to the door and through to where his father is talking to Hotch. Reid breathes for a moment, his adrenaline thrumming, then follows JJ.

His phone hums in his pocket, and he quickly switches it off.

After.

 

* * *

 

Joy is sitting in the hospital bed, her arms around her son and her mom by her side when they walk in. Hotch watches from the viewing window as Dave swallows twice, adjusts his collar, and moves slowly into the room.

Hayden is crying—the first time she’s looked this undone since it all began, Hotch notes—and Dave doesn’t look much better. Joy just looks… confused. Hurt. She doesn’t embrace her father, and she pulls away from her mom. Some things aren’t fixed so easily.

Kai reaches for his grandad, mouth curled into a smile.

Some things are.

“Aaron,” Spence says quietly, moving up to him. They stand side by side, watching as Dave mouths the words— _I’m your dad_ —and Joy begins to cry.

“How much of his daughter’s life has he missed?” Hotch says, angry for his friend. This isn’t how their reunion should have been. This isn’t _when_ they should have met.

“He won’t miss any more,” is all Spencer says in reply. “ _Aaron_.” This time, Hotch looks at him, and then to where he’s pointing. At the end of the bed where Joy sits as they clear her physically to leave, her daemon is perched. His wings wide and proud, his beak and talons marks with the blood of the man who’d taken her they hadn’t cleaned off yet. _Tafferling_ , Dave had told Hotch his name was, sounding awed. _He fought that dirtbag off, Aaron. When their attacker tried to take them, he marked him up bad. I couldn’t be prouder._

Eris perches next to her daughter’s owl. As they watch, the two owls touch beaks. A cautious beginning.

A hand slips through his, squeezing tight. When Hotch looks at Spencer, his heart tight in his chest, his husband is smiling. “Family is resilient,” Spencer says softly, the smile weakening. “Aaron, Mom is… struggling. I don’t think we should take the children back for a while.”

Hotch knows how much it hurts him to admit that Diana’s illness may be winning. He squeezes harder, before letting go. “We’ll do what we have to,” he promises him, feeling their daemons brushing together longingly nearby, the closeness that they can’t have until they’re home away from prying eyes. “Together.”


End file.
